Recite The Credo with me.
Recite The Credo with me.
… that Mount Rushmore was America’s grandest outcropping of kitsch.
No, no, they’d say! I went there in the fourth grade with my family and we all thought it was awesome!
*************************
WE HAVE GOT TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN. If it takes a Go Fund Me page; if it takes bake sales all over this land, my lord, all over this land; if it takes sacrifice sacrifice and more sacrifice, this has got to happen.
*************************
Will it be as great as Carhenge? No. But it will be great.
***************
He does tend to stir the creative imagination. Also really great writing. This, says Scathing Online Schoolmarm, is unbeatable. Highlights from a tightly organized, tonally controlled, brilliantly concise, little masterpiece:
no pollster left to lie to him
listened to the lethal quackery
harmful and bizarre
result of a country run by a crackpot
dereliction of duty, son.
fevered with viral hot spots.
Of late, Trump has been itching for a riot.
Nixon is a notch higher in the hell-scape
He’s Trump with a pious veneer
a timely bootlick.
*******************
And see what he’s about in his final paragraph? See all the ys, all the ee sounds that come off the page? The writer knows how to make prose poetic, and therefore much more coherent and powerful.
But there’s another image, equally satisfying. Trump could play one last gambit in the dictator’s checklist and refuse to leave office on Jan. 20 — election or no election — as required by the Constitution. If he does this, a weary nation would be rewarded with a presidential perp walk, as Trump is escorted out of the White House and into infamy by the military police.
If you lack the alliteration, assonance, perfect-wordism, and tonal cool this writer enjoys in abundance, sorry. Not everybody gets the style goodies. But you can learn a lot by reading him carefully.
One of America’s most prominent conservatives, Steven G. Calabresi, is calling for impeachment and removal, asap.
It would have been nice if Trump had postponed going full Kanye West until after the election. Unfortunately, he is breaking apart far faster than one might have anticipated, and this endangers us all.
Say what you will about our Genius of the Carpathians; he has inspired some of our best political writing, like this short piece from Peter Wehner.
(Wehner’s stylish marriage of crude and cruel brings to mind Vladimir Nabokov’s elegant description of Don Quixote: “a cruel and crude old book.”)
Also some of our best political advertisements, like this Seinfeld takeoff.
***************
No doubt wags up and down this land are sharpening their pencils as they sketch out Trump Finds Out He Can’t Win versions of this much-parodied bit of film.
Republicans up and down the ballot have also galvanized around a central 2020 messaging strategy focused on branding Democrats as far-left lovers of socialism. Months of that groundwork is now, at least in part, set back by the president’s own comments.
Bet it can’t even drink a glass of water with one hand, or walk down a ramp without serious difficulty. AMERICA DESERVES BETTER!!!
She’ll be worth the entire GDP of Slovenia.
To pose with a Bible in front of St John’s Church.
(Via my friend Martin Krygier.)
First he had to crap all over Jim Mattis; now, hours later, he has to strain to shit out a second doodoo, over John Allen. Fucking military heroes!
[T]he president … tweeted that he intended to designate [antifa] a terrorist organization—never mind that he has no authority to designate any domestic movement as such. Those of us who’ve looked closely at homegrown violent extremism do, in fact, agree that a domestic terrorism statute should exist. And were such a statute to come into being, the obvious targets for designation as domestic terrorists are, first and foremost, violent white supremacist groups and individuals who provide material assistance to these groups. And even if antifa is found to fit the statute as well, let me be clear: White supremacists have murdered, lynched, tortured, terrorized, oppressed, and discriminated against black Americans from the beginning of the idea of America. They have killed black Americans by the thousands, often in the most horrific ways imaginable. Far more damage to the United States has come from these terrorists—fascists, Klansmen, and neo-Nazis, all feeling newly empowered today—than those who have opposed them.
If I were King of the Nation — not queen, not duke, not prince.
My regal robes of the Nation, would be satin, not cotton, not chintz.
I’d command each thing, be it fish or fowl.
With a woof and a woof and a royal growl.
As I’d click my heel, all the trees would kneel.
And the mountains bow and the bulls kowtow.
And the sparrow would take wing – If I – If I – were King!
Each network would show respect to me. Reporters genuflect to me.
Though my tongue would lash, I would show compash
For every underling!
If I – If I – were King!
Just King!
Monarch of all I survey — Mo–na-a-a–a-arch of all I survey!
Your majesty, if you were King, you wouldn’t be afraid of anything?
Not nobody! Not no how!
Not even a coronavirus?
Impossirirus!
How about a Constitutionus?
Why, I’d thrash it from top to boottomus.
Supposing you met an elephant?
I’d wrap him up in sellaphant.
What if it were a brontosaurus?
I’d show him who’s King of the forest!
How!? How!?
Courage.
What makes a king out of an ass? Courage.
What waves the flag on the mast? Courage.
What makes the elephant charge his tusks
In the misty mist
Or the dusky dusk
What makes the muskrat guard his musk?
Courage.
What makes the Sphinx the seventh wonder?
Courage.
What makes the dawn come up like thunder?
Courage.
What makes the Hottentots so hot?
What puts the ape in apricot?
What do they got that I ain’t got?
Courage.
You can say that again.
Kushner was a reportedly mediocre student whose billionaire father appears to have bought him a place at Harvard.
********
The original headline on Michelle Goldberg’s piece was JARED KUSHNER IS GOING TO GET US ALL KILLED. Now it’s PUTTING JARED KUSHNER IN CHARGE IS UTTER MADNESS. I guess the first one was a bit over the top.
*********
Seth Meyers:
Oh, you’re doing your own [ventilator need] projections? Did your parents just buy you a TI-84 [graphing calculator]? … You’re not qualified to do anything, let alone tell New York how many ventilators they need. You’re a nepotism case, and you only got the White House job because you married into the family, and because the security guards believed your fake ID.
Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times
George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil
It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo
There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub
You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog
University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal
Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education
[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University
Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University
The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog
Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages
Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway
From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law
University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association
The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls
Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical
University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life
[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte